Copyright and Creative Commons

A learning experience

As you may have noticed, I generally copyright all my images. My camera is set up to add copyright information to each one and I add a strapline to each photo that I post here and on Flickr (although under UK law this is not strictly necessary, if I understand the situation correctly).
I don't do this in the expectation of making money from them, because I do not have the property releases that most of my best images would need for commercial use on stock libraries and so on. Indeed I am happy to allow them to be used gratis for educational and charitable purposes, but I expect to be asked to give my permission. I was once tricked into allowing one of my photos to be used in a creationist publication and I am determined never to let this happen again.
However a few days ago I was contacted by someone who was editing the Wikipedia page on the black lion tamarin. He had seen a photo of this species that I had posted on Flickr a few years ago and he asked if I would remove the copyright on that image and then give it a Creative Commons licence so that he could add it to the page, following Wikipedia's policy. I wanted to help him; so after a little research, I replied that I was reluctant to change the designation of that image, but that I had two similar photos from the same sequence which I would let him use.
We agreed on this. I processed these images from my RAW files and changed the IPTC information embedded in these images before posting them on Flickr with an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA).
I had not realised that there are several types of licence until I read the appropriate page of the Creative Commons website (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/). I quote the terms of this one (with apologies for the American English spelling)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

I was prepared to do this as a one-off gesture to show my support for Wikipedia and for black lion tamarin conservation, but I would prefer to use a more restrictive licence which does not allow use for commercial purposes. However I do not plan to change my general rule of copyrighting my work.

So if you happen to need a photo of a black lion tamarin (also known as a golden-rumped lion tamarin) here is your chance. The photos were taken at Bristol Zoo in May 2009.

It's probably worth adding that there aren't many good photos of these animals around. Their close relatives, the golden lion tamarin and the golden-headed lion tamarin, are rather more attractive and are kept and bred in many zoos, although they are endangered in the wild: there have been successful reintroductions of captive-bred golden lions into reserves in Brazil. Unfortunately the black lion tamarin is much more sensitive and does not do nearly as well in captivity. Shortly after I took these photos in the Zona Brazil complex at Bristol, they moved the animals to an island exhibit and they were not on display at all on my most recent visits (I hope they are still alive). Chester used to have their pair on display (although most of their outdoor enclosure was shielded from view), but they built off-show enclosures near the animal hospital to provide secluded accommodation for this species and the equally endangered and difficult pied tamarin.

A last word on copyright.

If you value your copyright, be careful. Many years ago when I was teaching, my employers drew up new contracts which stated that they owned the copyright of all material created by each teacher. I doubt whether that clause would have been enforceable for material which was not related to teaching duties, even if the Pricncipal had wanted to do so, but nevertheless I insisted that my contract should specifically except any material which I had created for purposes not linked to my duties at the college.

For many years I posted my photos on my favourite discussion board, ZooChat (http://www.zoochat.com/) which acknowledged the photographers copyright. However I noticed a couple of months ago that this had been removed from the detailed captions of the photos, so I looked at the board's Terms of Use and noted that they had been changed to state that 

By posting any content to this site you irrevocably licence xxxxxx Group to reproduce, edit or distribute that content in any form in any location worldwide, and you waive any moral rights you have in that content. This licence is non-exclusive so you can continue to use your own material in any way including allowing others to use it.

 In consequence, although I still post some small images on the site, I no longer post my best images there - they come here instead  :)